And this photo — it is a very typical scene from a local Chai shop — kind of like my version of Fast Food or Room Service. First thing to be done each day is to send the office boy out to get my order for breakfast or lunch and this is where he goes (or somewhere similar). The food is always incredibly good and the chai is out of this world — especially if this is the first breakfast for the day! They are making my bread order, called roti or na'an, and the guy in the turban is pouring the chai into the large teapot. There is nothing quite like taking your freshly baked bread, which is nothing more than a thin smear of dough cooked very quickly with oil and salt, rolling some mint or chutney in it and eating it on the spot, washed down with some steaming chai. The conversation is also just as warm and colorful.
The guys who run it, like all chai shop owners, always seem to have great expansive characters — it seems to come with the turf. The reason is he laughing here is I had just told him in Hindi that he looked like one of the new crop of young and very slim male movie stars from Bollywood! The guy in the turban had a really funny mock-reaction after the photo was taken, and they both ended up doing a bit of an impromptu dance, but I was laughing to hard by then that I couldn't take another photo. The straight guy stayed deadpan the entire time which just made it all the more funny! Doesn't it make you want to be there, enjoying the jokes and bread?
Sometimes I think that I can smell the bread when I look at this image.
Zen